Hideaki Anno wrote:“ is someone who is aware of the fact that even if she dies, there’ll be another to replace her, so she doesn’t value her life very highly,” Anno explains, slouching ever-deeper into the couch. “Her presence, her existence—ostensible existence—is ephemeral. She’s a very sad girl. She only has the barest minimum of what she needs to have. She’s damaged in some way; she hurts herself. She doesn’t need friends.”

Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like :Rei: as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.

Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”

Sorry for the , but I came across this and to hear something that echoes my own sentiment from a man I respect tremendously, well, you can understand my enthusiasm to share this.

They think they are big kids now because they got their asses handed to them not just by America, but the Soviets and the Australians. Hence I still say Europe > Asia all the way.

Yeah, all of Asia is terrible because Japan was outnumbered 4-1 in population alone and lost the battle of Midway. Nevermind that they had no possible way to win against the United States beyond suing for peace or that they fought to the last man in many battles, all of Asia is clearly a bunch of pussies. Forget the fact that most of the Soviet Union is in Asia, they're pussies too. Also India.

Silverdream wrote:Yeah, all of Asia is terrible because Japan was outnumbered 4-1 in population alone and lost the battle of Midway. Nevermind that they had no possible way to win against the United States beyond suing for peace or that they fought to the last man in many battles, all of Asia is clearly a bunch of pussies. Forget the fact that most of the Soviet Union is in Asia, they're pussies too. Also India.

Also, forget the fact that several loyal Japanese officers actually stayed hunkered down in outlying islands, even years after WWII was over, so completely in love with their own country that they refused to accept the fact that it had surrendered.

Let's also forget that THE FRICKING HUNS WERE DEFEATED BY JAPANESE WIND MAGIC...TWICE.

Yeah, like the Wiki says, the two MONGOL invasions(Huns are basically the same. Whatever.) by sea were the closest Japan every came to being invaded successfully. The first time, they were completely unprepared for an invasion by sea, and would've totally been massacred. Strangely, though, a typhoon struck at just the right time and capsized/destroyed their fleet. This could have, of course, been some sort of coincidence, except, THAT SHIT HAPPENED A SECOND TIME!

The second time, though, ships/men actually did hit the beaches. They were of course quickly sent packing by an army of Samurai/other doods, and retreated to sea. So another typhoon wooshed in and destroyed the remaining mongols at sea. After that, the Mongol leader of the time, who always took care not to disrespect the gods of other cultures, for fear they might actually be worshiping the same god as the mongols, or perhaps a more powerful god, decided that they had better not F with Japan anymore. Also, I mean...all Japan has/had of note was a crazy tough warrior class. Their actual land was worthless compared to what the Mongols already had. No major resource deposits, no high-quality metals, nothin'. There's a reason that most of japan was once made of wood, paper, and rocks. They didn't really have much else, especially after they became an isolationist society.

I find it incredibly interesting that WIND pretty much saved them, especially when there was such a famous Japanese legend of a warrior whose sword could create massive gusts of wind. I don't remember the names of the warrior or the sword. Maybe Masamune? Who knows.

Anyway, yeah, the only time Japan has ever been conquered in the entirety of history was when the U.S. bombed the bejesus out of them in WWII. Sadly, the Japanese were on the wrong side of the war that time. If they had sided with the Allies, I have no doubt that they would have just beaten the crap out of any Axis troops that came after them. Like, really, if we hadn't developed the atom bomb, I'm not really sure we could've conquered them efficiently. We would have lost too many soldiers/had too many machines blown up.